Ivy Coach College Admissions Blog

Ivy Coach salutes U of Chicago for another year of the best college admissions essays (photo credit: Michael Barera).

We wanted to write a little bit more about the U of Chicago admissions essays for the 2013-2014 college admissions cycle. We’ve already shared with you their first three creative college essay prompts but let’s share with you their other three gems. As you may know, the University of Chicago defies the status quo of the college admissions community by requiring students to write essays that really can usually only work for the University of Chicago. So they’re invariably going to have fewer applicants. Thus, their admission rate won’t be as competitive as it could be if they dropped this requirement and their “US News & World Report” rankings suffer accordingly. But by their actions, the University of Chicago proudly doesn’t seem to care much about this. They just want students who really want to go to the University of Chicago. For this, Ivy Coach salutes the University of Chicago for boldly doing what so few schools dare to do.

Anyhow — back to the college essay prompts. The fourth essay prompt reads, “The mantis shrimp can perceive both polarized light and multispectral images; they have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom. Human eyes have color receptors for three colors (red, green, and blue); the mantis shrimp has receptors for sixteen types of color, enabling them to see a spectrum far beyond the capacity of the human brain. Seriously, how cool is the mantis shrimp. What might they be able to see that we cannot? What are we missing? Inspired by Tess Moran, Class of 2016.” Now that’s a cool question! Can you think what you would write about in your response?

The fifth essay prompt reads, “How are apples and oranges supposed to be compared? Possible answers involve, but are not limited to, statistics, chemistry, physics, linguistics, and philosophy. Inspired by Florence Chan, Class of 2015.” Funny, huh? These are questions that require you to actually think about what to write in response! And the final essay prompt reads, “In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, pose a question of your own. If your prompt is original and thoughtful, then you should have little trouble writing a great essay. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk, and have fun.” So this one is more open-ended and it allows you to shape the essay you really want to write about.

Go University of Chicago for continuing with your awesome college essay questions!